‘Christmas only happens when it happens in our hearts.”
I heard this line in a Christmas carol sung by three little angels the other day and it struck me as entirely appropriate for our time. Every Christmas, I write about families’ experience of homelessness, trying to appeal to the heart of the nation at this time of year; and every Christmas, the situation is worse than it was the previous year.
There has been a very slight drop this year in the number of new families becoming homeless in Dublin. But the harsh reality is that there will be at least 120 more families homeless this Christmas compared to last year as latest figures show a shocking total of 1733 families homeless nationwide.
It is awful to see that there is now a record total of number of 10,514 homeless, of whom 3,826 are children.
Think of it. This is not a war zone. We are not experiencing some terrible event such as wild fire or earthquake or famine. We are among the most privileged nations on earth. Our economy, we hear, is growing. So how can there possibly be almost four thousand children who will spend this Christmas in cramped hotel rooms or homeless hubs?
Their schoolmates are making Christmas lists, while they are living in hotel rooms, so full of suitcases and laundry, that they can hardly move, never mind play
It was heart breaking to hear that one child in a family who is homeless actually asked her mother: “Do we have to stay in the broken house again tonight?”
What has happened to the citizens of this country that we are prepared to accept that this Christmas, there are children for whom the idea of a family Christmas tree in their own living room is an impossible dream. Their schoolmates are making Christmas lists, while they are living in hotel rooms so full of suitcases, schoolbags, laundry, utensils, takeaway cartons, that they can hardly move, never mind play.
Some of these families have only become homeless recently. They are people who have been proud to work hard and pay their way, and last Christmas they were in their own homes. But the cruelty of our market-driven housing system has finally caught up with them, and they find themselves suddenly homeless at Christmas.
Others are facing into their second or even their third Christmas in emergency accommodation. They are depressed and exhausted and desperate to give their children a normal life.
And babies are now being born into homelessness. One mother told her story in Focus Ireland’s Christmas appeal advert. She said: “Luke arrived into our world at 5.02am. But the first call I made at 7am wasn’t to family. It was to Focus Ireland as we had nowhere to go and were so stressed and afraid.”
Just imagine trying to look after a newborn in a hotel room. Think of an older baby trying to learn to crawl in a cramped space. Homelessness is hurting children the most and many are missing development milestones due to their living conditions.
Shocking as the use of emergency accommodation for families in need of longer-term solutions is, what is way worse is the use of one-night-only accommodation. Families who are dismayed, confused, upset, distressed at what has befallen them are insecure even in the cramped and unsuitable conditions of a hotel room. Just imagine it. A family is given a room for the night, to take them off the streets, but they have to be out in the morning and they may not know until late that evening whether they have somewhere to sleep that night.
Last month, 26 families were offered a place to sleep only for one night at a time. This is totally and utterly unacceptable. There have been widespread calls for this practice of one-night-only accommodation to end, but it is still going on.
No child should have to go through this. One little boy (Mark) aged only seven describing his experience of homelessness said: “I miss our old home. I had my own room there and could play. Now we are always moving. I don’t know where we are going.”
If it was your family, Mr Taoiseach, Mr Housing Minister, would you accept these conditions for them?
I know that many people and organisations are working tirelessly to try to improve things in partnership with the Dublin Region Homeless Executive.
But there is only so much we can do. Government has to stop wringing its hands and start to act with vision and with energy and with a real commitment to end this terrible situation for our most vulnerable citizens
Government simply has to put in place a specific family homelessness strategy, alongside a cast-iron guarantee that no family or individual remains homeless for longer than six months. That is really not a lot to ask. If it was your family, Mr Taoiseach, Mr Housing Minister, would you accept these conditions for them?
Christmas only happens when our hearts are open – not only to our family, friends and community, but also to the stranger; to people who are struggling to keep a roof over their children’s heads in a market-driven housing system; to immigrants, whether asylum seekers or economic migrants; to people who are marginalised and excluded; to people who are displaced, stressed and without a home, without a front door to close on a sometimes hostile world.
Sr Stanislaus Kennedy is life president and founder of Focus Ireland